Aftershock
by greatestheights
Summary: "Nobody hurts on purpose." On the morning of Christmas Eve, Stanley Keyworth talks to five White House staffers about Josh Lyman.
1. I

**_NOTES:_**

This is a companion piece to "Noel."

A huge, heartfelt thank you to everyone on tumblr who cheered me on, listened to me whine, and helped me iron out the timeline of the episode. And to Blake, who spent many a long summer night talking me through epigraphs and bouts of writer's block: this is for you. Thank you for never letting me give up.

* * *

 _aftershock (n): the effect, result, or repercussion of an event; aftermath; consequence._

 **I.**

"After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom."

― Arthur Golden

* * *

He was thinking about Noah again. It was hard not to.

Sometimes, Leo would study Josh and see Noah Lyman flashing through. It was funny. The kid had never seemed to look much like his old man when he was growing up, and really, he still didn't. Josh had his mother's coloring, her eyes, her smile—right down to the dimples. He was loud like her, in all the ways that Noah had not been. When Leo thought of Josh Lyman, he thought of hurricanes. Concentrated passion and fierce intelligence; a force capable of destruction, true, but also startling, almost breathtaking, in its chaos. Besides, once you knew how to harness Josh, once you understood him, it was obvious all that energy was swirling around a center of intense focus.

That center was everything. It made Josh brilliant. It made him indispensable. Josh Lyman: the guy the guy's guy counted on. The guy who could sweep into a meeting with some of the most vitriolic politicians in the country and talk them into effortless knots, until they'd all made promises he would bully them into keeping. They'd be too caught up in the bluster to notice that every move Josh made, every smartass remark, every casual threat, every snap of his temper, was calculated. He could be your best buddy one minute, a circling vulture the next. That always threw them. More than one party elder had taken Leo aside, told him that his deputy was crazy _(he's effective, Leo, but Jesus—get your dog on a leash)._ They only saw the unpredictable loudmouth. The terrier. The natural disaster. They also saw that Josh was difficult to beat, the man Bartlet sent when there were no punches left to pull, but they didn't see _him_ , not really. Like his father, Josh was quite a bit more than he liked most people to notice.

When Leo thought of Noah Lyman, he thought of the sea on a calm, cloudy day. Quiet, just until the wind changed. He had been such a hard man, although certainly not a cruel one. Funny, at times cuttingly so. Smart, but in a different way than Josh. Surprisingly kindhearted, especially when it came to children. Stubborn as all hell. And once you finally got him started on a subject he found interesting, you couldn't get him to shut up. More often than not, that subject was Josh. Leo had always gotten an earful about the kid when he and Noah met up for drinks throughout the years, especially when Josh took an interest in politics. Leo had even helped Josh get his foot in the door of the Senate after he graduated from Yale, much to the Lyman family's collective gratitude.

After that, though, there had been fewer visits. The years kept crawling by. Leo descended headfirst into his addiction, stopped calling his old friend entirely—but one night, after Leo had finally finished rehab, Noah showed up on his doorstep with a box of cigars. He talked to Leo about politics and Josh and Mallory and the weather and D.C., and didn't once make it strange that they weren't sharing their usual bottle of scotch. They didn't discuss Sierra-Tucson or the booze or the pills that night; in fact, they never did. Noah would just keep stopping by whenever he was in town to visit Josh, always with some new book, always with his usual wry grin, always with a clap on the shoulder and the silent understanding that he wasn't going anywhere.

It went on like that, their comfortable friendship, their sporadic visits and quick phone calls, especially after Leo brought Josh onto the Bartlet campaign. Noah would call all the time to check in, even when he'd already spoken with Josh earlier in the day. Leo always picked up the phone, knew that Noah was bored out of his skull. He'd been spending too much time in hospital rooms, doing too many easy crossword puzzles. Usually, it was just _how much trouble is that kid of mine giving you?_ and _your Bartlet guy could be a hell of a speaker if he'd just get to the point already,_ but one day, it was something different. Something serious.

"I'm getting worse," Noah had said without preamble. "Don't tell Josh—he'll know soon enough. He's gotta focus on the primaries. Just look after the kid for me, won't you? He doesn't have anybody else."

Leo had understood what that meant. This was a man who never asked for anything, who'd practically shrugged off Leo's deepest sympathies when Joanie had died all those years ago, who didn't even mention his cancer until he showed up for one of their chats missing all of his hair (and about twenty-five pounds).

"Of course I'll look after him," Leo had promised. "Not that he needs it! You should see him going toe-to-toe with the Governor. He's made of strong stuff, Noah."

"He is," Noah had said after a long pause. "But don't let him fool you."

Leo didn't get it then. He didn't get it for a long time, not even when Noah died, not even when Josh came back from the funeral, grim-faced and determined. He didn't get it until the night Josh turned to the President, pressed the NSC card back into Leo's hand, and told them he wanted to be a comfort to his friends in tragedy, to celebrate with them in triumph, to be able to look them in the eye for all the times in between. "Leo," Josh had said, "it's not for me."

That's when it clicked. That's when Leo knew. That's when Leo started looking for Noah, and finding him in the most unexpected places: in Josh's unrelenting loyalty, in the lines around his eyes, in the way he couldn't carry a card that the rest of his friends didn't have. Noah was Josh's guilt, his inability to accept help. Noah was Josh's laughter after a long day. Noah was the eye of the storm. He was there, always. He was here, now.

And Leo had let him down.

"Leo? I'm sorry," Stanley Keyworth said, leaning forward over the table. "Did you hear that last question?"

"What?" Leo's attention shifted back to the man in front of him. The young woman sitting off to the side was watching closely, her hands folded in her lap.

"I asked you if there was anything else I should know about Josh Lyman."

"Yeah," Leo muttered, shifting in his seat, fists clenched. "He's not gonna make this easy for you."

"They almost never do." Stanley flipped back through his notebook. "You've known him a long time?"

"Practically his whole life," Leo said. "He's a good kid. We just want him—we want him better. None of this was his fault."

"It wasn't anybody's fault."

"Right." Leo nodded. "Right, of course."

"We'll need to talk to the rest of your people, too," Stanley said, tapping at his notebook. "We want to get a full picture of the past several weeks. You said there was a woman, someone who works closely with him? She noticed it first?"

"That's Donna Moss. She came to me just before the incident in the Oval Office."

"Okay. Who else?"

"You'll probably want the rest of the senior staff. There's Toby Ziegler, Sam Seaborn, C.J. Cregg. The President, obviously, but you'll understand that he's a little busy today. I'm here on his behalf as well."

"Absolutely," Stanley said. He smiled, reached out to shake Leo's hand. "I'm glad you called. This was the best thing you could have done for him."

"Thanks for coming, Stanley." Leo got to his feet, heaved a sigh. "Just don't let him fool you, okay? He's tough, but..."

"I've been doing this a long time, Leo. He's in good hands."

"Yeah," Leo said, blinking rapidly. "Yeah, okay. I'll send one of them in."

Leo stalked off into the hallway, let the door bang shut behind him. He thought about Josh's blank face in the Oval Office, about the helpless, empty fear in his eyes. He thought about Noah and his late night visits. There'd been one in particular, one of the last times Noah had been able to travel before the cancer got bad. It was past midnight. They'd eaten all the snacks in the kitchen, smoked all the cigars. Noah said he'd better be going, and Leo had just blurted it out: thanks. Thanks for always coming. Leo had tried to tell him what it meant, to have a friend who didn't disappear, who didn't need to be told there are some things that just can't be talked about. To have a friend who knew, intimately, about pain. He hadn't really been able to get the words out, though. He wasn't good at that.

Noah had shot Leo that familiar grin—so like Josh's, even though it really wasn't. Somehow, it lit up his face in the exact same way.

"Let me tell you a story," Noah had said. "There's this guy walking down the street, when he falls into a hole..."

Leo came to a halt just outside Sam's office. Closed his eyes. Thought one last time of hurricanes, of oceans, of fire and disease and gunshots and grief. Of stubborn men who were nothing alike, except when they were very much the same.

He knocked once and opened the door. Sam Seaborn was slouched in his desk chair, but he scrambled upright immediately. They looked at each other for a moment, and then Sam whispered: "Did you see his hand?"

"Yeah."

"He says he broke a glass."

"Yeah."

"I don't think he broke a glass, Leo."

"No," Leo agreed, and then he jerked his chin towards the hall. "C'mon, now. Your turn."


	2. II

**II.**

"I do not ask the wounded person how he feels. I myself become the wounded person."

― Walt Whitman

* * *

There are things you notice.

Like that one time, right after the shooting, when Josh had only been home from the hospital for about a week. Sam snuck over on his lunch to surprise Josh with burgers and beers (it was against rules seven and fifteen: Donna would not have approved). He'd timed it perfectly, too. Donna was sitting in for Josh in a meeting with Senator Harbeson, and Sam was positive she'd be there for at least two hours. It gave him enough time to get to Josh's and back to the White House without having to worry about traffic. Enough time to grill Josh about some federal budget thing; Sam could remember wanting to get the language right. Enough time to catch up. Enough time to have a couple drinks and laugh and maybe try to forget about that long nightmare of a month.

So, Sam had gone, Heineken and burgers from Sal's in hand, and he'd knocked. Waited. Knocked. Called, gotten no answer. Left two messages. Knocked, knocked, knocked—and then, heart pounding dully in his ears, finally tried the door.

It was unlocked. Sam let himself in, dropped the food and six-pack on the counter. Then, he'd yelled Josh's name.

It came out louder than he meant it to, but there was still no movement, no reply. It occurred to Sam that maybe Josh wasn't home. Maybe he had a doctor's appointment. Maybe he was just in a deep, Percocet-induced sleep. Maybe, Sam thought, Donna had made those rules for a reason. Maybe.

Still, though, he started walking. There was nothing in the living room. The bathroom was dark. The bedroom door was cracked, and Sam pushed it open, not sure what he was expecting to find, not sure if he wanted to find anything at all. At first, the sight of the empty bed felt encouraging, like Josh really just had stepped out...but then, Sam saw him.

Josh had been sitting in the corner with his legs splayed out, staring straight ahead. He didn't look at Sam. He didn't say anything. He didn't move. He just sat, his hand pressed below his heart, eyes locked on something Sam couldn't see.

It hurt to watch.

Sam had dropped down beside his friend, grabbed his shoulder, tried his name. "Josh? Josh. Josh, Josh, Josh." He'd said that over and over, until Josh finally seemed to hear him, to shudder back into glass-eyed reality.

"Sorry," Josh had said, frowning at Sam, shaking his head. "What were we talking about?"

It had taken awhile to get Josh to his feet, and then into bed. Josh had been dazed, shaky. He kept grabbing at the bandages on his chest. He didn't seem to really know where he was. Sam had waited until Josh was asleep again, and then he'd paged Donna until she called, had answered the phone and demanded, "Jesus Christ, why didn't you tell me he was this bad?"

"I told you not to go over there without calling first," Donna had replied at once. "He's on a lot of meds, Sam. We've talked about this."

"He was..." Sam had been trying to catch his breath, leaning against the wall in Josh's living room. "He wasn't _there_ , Donna. He was nearly catatonic."

"He's on a lot of meds," Donna repeated. "You've been talking to him in between doses—he's not himself. I didn't want anyone else to have to see him that way."

"I wish you'd said. I didn't think it was like this."

"He got shot." Donna's voice was choked. "It's bad."

"I know."

"Don't tell him," Donna whispered. "He'd hate it if...he won't remember, okay? Come see him tomorrow or something, and don't tell him."

"I'm so sorry," Sam said, although he hadn't been sure who he was apologizing to.

The burgers had gone cold, so Sam threw them away and put the beer in the fridge. He sat in the living room for ten more minutes, listening, and listening some more, and waiting, and trying very hard not to think.

There are things you notice.

"No," Sam told Stanley, who seemed to be taking a novel's worth of notes. "Nothing about Josh seemed off to me at that point."

"Leo mentioned something about a pilot?" Stanley asked, without looking up.

"Right," Sam said. "You've seen it on the news, I'm sure."

"I only watch ESPN and _Sports Night_. What about the pilot?"

"He committed suicide," Sam said. His own voice sounded wrong to him; it was too hoarse, or too soft, or too something. "Crashed his plane on purpose after going off radar. Josh was doing some background on him, and he told me that they had the same birthday. I didn't think anything of it."

"This was about three weeks ago?"

"That's right. Toby said...I didn't notice, but Toby said Josh was acting strange, even then. Angry. Snapping."

"Snapping about what?"

"I don't know," Sam said, blinking down at his hands. "I wasn't paying attention, I guess. Maybe he seemed wound-up, but that's Josh. He gets that way. It wasn't until the other day that I knew we had a problem."

"The same day as the Christmas party?" Stanley confirmed.

"Yes."

Kaytha, Stanley's trainee, had a very kind face. When she looked at Sam, when she smiled, it felt genuine. It felt like she really cared.

"Can you tell us a little more about that?" Kaytha asked.

"I don't know what to say." Sam studied his hands again. "I suppose the details don't matter. Josh wasn't himself. I've seen him mad, but never at the President. He started screaming in the Oval Office, which is something he'd never, ever do. He can get intense, but this was..."

"It was different," Stanley finished. Sam met his eye.

"Yes," Sam said. "That's one word for it."

"Did Josh seem off to you at all before he started yelling?"

"He was pacing. I knew he wasn't happy, that he didn't agree with the topic of the meeting. But when he was yelling at the President, it was like he was a different person; when it was over, he was breathing as if he'd just dragged himself through a marathon. It scared me."

"I imagine it did," Stanley said.

"His hand," Sam murmured. "He cut his hand."

"Leo told us."

"Do you think he did it on purpose?" Sam spat out the question before he could decide not to.

Stanley didn't answer right away. The fire crackled off in the background, and the sunlight streaming in through the windows seemed muted, somehow. Cold. It didn't feel much like Christmas.

"I haven't met Josh yet, but I'll tell you this, Sam," Stanley said. "Nobody hurts on purpose." Such careful words, as gentle as they were pointed. They tore through Sam, the way painful truths usually did.

Sam bit his tongue and nodded. There are things you notice, he thought again, things anybody would notice. You notice the blood and the shouting, because how could you not? You notice the silence, because there are never enough words to fill it. You notice what's easy. You notice what no longer gives you a choice.

Shouldn't it stand to reason, then, that Sam would have noticed his best friend splintering apart? It shouldn't have taken blood. It shouldn't have taken shouting. It should have been the look on Josh's face when he said, "You know this guy, the pilot? We have the same birthday." It should have been the light in his office at four-thirty, the morning Sam came in early and knew without question that Josh had never gone home, that he hadn't gone home for at least two days. It should have been the barbed comments that sounded wrong coming out of Josh's mouth, the smile that wasn't much like a smile at all. The way he always muttered, "I'm fine." The circles under his eyes. God—it should have been everything.

What good was it to notice anything, if Sam had missed what actually mattered?

"If we'd caught this a few weeks ago," Sam said, staring straight ahead at the fire, "would it have made any difference?"

"You couldn't have caught it then," Stanley said calmly.

"Why not?"

"Think about a can of soda. You pick it up out of the fridge, expecting it to be just like any other Pepsi. What you don't know is that your dad knocked it over the other day, and that your kid brother shook it up last night, and before all of that, your mom dropped it on her way in from the store. You can't see the damage that's been done. Maybe you'd notice a dent here or there if you really looked it over, but lots of cans have dents, right? So, you open it. It explodes. You couldn't have done anything to stop it, though God knows you'd want to."

"I don't accept that," Sam said. He wanted to scream, to break something, to make somebody understand. "I don't accept that we couldn't have...we knew he'd been shot. We knew he's a workaholic with a pathological inability to take care of himself. In your clever little analogy, it's like we watched the can get kicked down a flight of stairs for six months, and then were surprised when everything ended up covered in Pepsi."

"You're forgetting something pretty important," Stanley cut in.

"What?" Sam almost didn't want to know. He just wanted to burrow into his guilt, his anger. To disappear.

"You all got shot at, too," Stanley said. "Also, I don't care how well you think you know a person. Trauma is sneaky. It's corrosive, Sam, and it's usually very quiet until it's not. If it could be beaten by good intentions and perceptive colleagues, Kaytha and I would be out of work."

Sam took off his glasses, ran both hands over his face.

"What can I do?" he whispered. "How can I help him?"

"Just be his friend. And be patient, okay? It's probably going to take time."

"It's always about time, isn't it?"

"Yes, but don't worry. There's plenty." Stanley closed his notebook. "All right, Sam. I think we're done here. Thanks for talking to us."

Later, sitting at his desk, Sam tried to write it all down. He was better at writing with a keyboard, could never understand why Toby preferred longhand, but he picked up a pen and a legal pad anyway, trying to make sense of the hollow place in his chest. Sam didn't even know where to begin. Writing was simply the lens through which he processed the world, and he badly wanted that lens now. It seemed like if he could force the words out and make them his own, they wouldn't keep straining against his skin. Maybe they wouldn't hurt so much.

But the words wouldn't come and the ache wouldn't stop; Josh wasn't okay, and maybe Sam wasn't either. Maybe none of them were.

Josh had looked at the floor earlier when Sam asked about his hand.

"I broke a glass the other night," Josh had said, his tone going flat and colorless. "I'm fine." He'd been bleeding through his bandage.

Maybe Stanley was right: maybe they just needed time. Maybe it would just be a lot of hard work. Maybe you don't ever forget the gunshots—maybe you just learn not to fear them. Maybe, maybe, maybe just.

Sam dropped the pen, gave up on trying to untangle the mass of his thoughts. This was a time for action, not pontificating. Leo had said Josh would be in with ATVA all day, and would probably need to go to the ER afterwards. Sam could stop by Josh's place tomorrow with burgers and beer, could find a way to say _I'm here for you_ without using those exact words. They'd sit together, the way they always had, and they wouldn't need anything else. It would be a start—it would have to be, wouldn't it? And Sam would call first.

Sam resolved to get back to work. There was a speech that needed polishing, some remarks for the President's holiday event with the D.C. Coalition for the Homeless, plus a lot of follow-up on the chat with Didion, who had been more willing to bend on the SPR than even Sam had thought possible. There was plenty to do. More than enough.

Instead, Sam found himself examining his hands again, listening to the hum of the bullpen, the faint ringing of phones, the grumble of Toby's voice from next door. He sat there like that for almost half an hour before he realized: there was no music in the lobby. No brass quintet. No bagpipes. No violins or pianos. No cello. For the first time in weeks, the West Wing had gone very quiet.

Strange, what you could get used to. At first, Sam had groaned along with everybody else about the barrage of nonstop holiday cheer Toby seemed intent on delivering. Now, though, Sam wanted it back with an urgency that startled him, wanted the noise and the distraction and "The First Noel" echoing through his head on loop.

He scrambled for the little radio on his bookshelf, scanned around for the right station, and then cranked it up as loud as it would go, until Toby banged on the window separating their offices, until all Sam could hear was Frank Sinatra crooning "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," until he could stop thinking, until the door flew open and Toby shouted, "What the _hell—?_ " Until Sam looked up, gasping for breath, holding onto that radio so tightly it hurt. Until Toby jerked forward, crossed the room in two strides, reached out to dial the volume down.

"Sam." Toby's voice was full of unasked questions.

"It's the strangest thing," Sam said. "There's no music in the lobby today, and I somehow didn't notice until just now."

Toby kept staring, and the song kept playing, and Sam kept shaking his head.

"The strangest thing," he muttered, turning the volume back up. "The strangest goddamn thing."


	3. III

**III.**

"We keep asking where they have gone  
those years we remember and we  
reach for them like hands in the night."

― W.S. Merwin

* * *

"Let's go back to your conversation with Josh on the nineteenth."

"What about it?"

"You said, 'Josh seemed upset.' Can you be as specific as possible, please?"

Stanley Keyworth was, C.J. thought, a very odd man. His voice was detached; his tone, casual; his eyes, sharp; his face, schooled into an expression of placid, dispassionate interest. This was not the type of doctor she'd been picturing when Leo had rapped on her door the other day and explained ATVA would be dropping by. Of course, C.J. already knew about ATVA: she'd flat-out begged Leo to bring them in after the shooting. He'd been too harried to pay her much mind then, had blankly said he would consider running it by the President. It wasn't that he wouldn't have listened if C.J. had chosen to press the matter. In fact, she was certain that Leo would have gotten ATVA in the next day if she'd insisted he must. It was just that C.J. had seen how overworked and exhausted her boss was, how he was struggling to keep the place afloat without his deputy, how he was juggling a hundred thousand things and didn't need her to start throwing any curveballs.

Anyway, at that particular juncture, C.J. had been concerned about Toby, with his quiet, unrelenting anger and his determination to right an injustice older than the country itself. Next, she was worrying after the President's fixation on some school board race, and then of course, there was Charlie, who had been careful to remain impossibly, stoically put together. When the midterms arrived, it was all too much—there wasn't time to think of anything else—and at last, finally, mercifully, Josh came home, not much worse for wear. It felt like the gathering clouds had melted into sunshine. There Josh was again, steamrolling his way through the White House, yelling about Republicans, grabbing C.J. in the mess and stealing half of her donut, bothering Toby with the same gleeful insanity it would take to poke a bear with a stick, teasing Sam about everything from his hair to his luck with women, getting Leo to fondly roll his eyes and scowl up at the ceiling, shamelessly flirting with Donna (and pretending, possibly even to himself, that he was doing no such thing). Everything had been more than fine, those first couple weeks. Everything had been about as perfect as was possible, in the bizarre, hectic, completely imperfect way of the White House.

It couldn't have been expected to last, C.J. admitted to herself, studying the doctor in front of her. She wasn't stupid, much less naive; people like that didn't last long in her line of work. She just wished there was a way to go back.

"The nineteenth," C.J. said. "Yes, of course. I was a little distracted that day. There had been an incident on a White House tour—a woman screaming at a painting. I was putting the pieces together when Josh came in. I can tell you that he seemed awfully worked up about the pilot."

"The pilot," Stanley repeated, his strange, heavy gaze dropping back down to the notebook in front of him. "The pilot who committed suicide?"

"That's right," C.J. said, trying to get comfortable in her chair. It was digging painfully into her lower back. "Robert Cano. Josh had been working on—"

"The background, yes," Stanley cut in. "Josh had learned that he and this pilot shared a birthday. Did his response to that strike you as unusual?"

"They shared a birthday?" C.J. frowned. "I didn't know that. When Josh came to me that day, the nineteenth, he was angry that we weren't getting any more information about Captain Cano. He said...let's see, he said something like, 'A perfectly healthy guy kills himself and nobody's asking why?'"

"And what did you say?"

"I told him people were asking but that we just didn't _know_ why, except that Captain Cano obviously wasn't perfectly healthy anymore."

"How did Josh respond to that?" Stanley looked up again, pen at the ready. C.J. fiddled with the hem of her skirt, then crossed and re-crossed her legs, tucking one ankle behind the other.

"He said all right," C.J. replied after a moment. "He seemed to accept it, but he looked…sick, almost. I wish I'd asked him what was wrong."

"Why didn't you?"

"Excuse me?" C.J. knew that her voice had just risen dramatically, that she hadn't done a good job of disguising any of her indignation, but she couldn't find it in herself to be embarrassed. She didn't much care for Stanley Keyworth or any of his implications.

"Why didn't you ask, C.J.?" Stanley said. "I wasn't suggesting that you should have. I'm simply curious about why you chose not to."

"I didn't _choose not to_. I was just distracted! Right before he was going to leave, I asked Josh to look at a photograph, and he spotted the painting—oh God, what does it matter? I had no idea any of this was going to happen. If I had, don't you think I would have asked?" She stopped, trying to catch her temper before it truly got ahead of her, and added: "I would have asked. I would have done more than ask, Dr. Keyworth."

"It's Stanley," he said, "and of course you would have. C.J., I was trying to get at something you mentioned earlier, when you told me Josh started shouting at everyone in the bullpen. I've talked to you, Leo McGarry, and Sam Seaborn, and the underlying theme I've come away with is that Josh Lyman is a person who gets angry a lot. He sounds like an impatient, impassioned, vocal guy—which, by the way, I'm certainly not disparaging. What I need to understand is whether Josh was upset because that's just how he is, or if Josh was upset because that's how his _trauma_ is. Your reaction is important: maybe you didn't ask what was wrong because something's wrong with Josh a lot. Maybe you didn't ask because you were just distracted. I promise, that's all I meant."

"Oh." C.J. swallowed. She could feel her face flushing, her pulse still racing angrily, and she pressed a hand to her forehead. "You'll have to forgive me. We're all a little edgier than usual."

"I would think so," Stanley said, in that same deliberately calm tone. "Didn't somebody try to kill you guys a few months back?"

C.J. snorted. "They didn't try hard enough."

"Thank God for that." Stanley cracked a grin so tiny C.J. almost could have missed it. His eyes seemed warmer, though. "So, back to the nineteenth, just to make sure I fully understand…you didn't ask because you were distracted?"

"Yes. And something you should know about Josh—he does shout a lot, but it's usually for a good reason. He also doesn't get angry at the people he cares about. Not really."

"The people he cares about." Stanley wrote that down, and then circled it. "That would be you?"

"Well, sure," C.J. said. When Stanley raised his eyebrows, she caught his meaning. "Oh, Jesus. Not like that. Look, all I meant is that Josh can be surprisingly sensitive. He's also unbelievably loyal; you should have seen him go to bat for Leo McGarry when all that nonsense about the addiction came out, and he would have done the same for the rest of us. I think, sometimes, that Josh is glad he was the one who almost died. If it had been any of us instead, it would have eaten him from the inside out."

"What makes you say that?" Stanley asked, leaning forward. "Again, C.J., this is purely so that I better understand Josh. We just want to be able to help him."

"Right. Right, of course." C.J. closed her eyes just as her head fell to her hands.

"We can stop for a minute, if you like," Stanley's trainee piped up.

"Absolutely," Stanley agreed. "Do you need a glass of water?"

"No," C.J. said, a little taken aback at her own vehemence. "No, let's finish this. It's just—it's just—I'm so furious with myself." She sucked in a long, deliberate breath, trying to squash the surge of emotion back down where it belonged. "I'm _furious_ , and I'm heartbroken for Josh, and honestly, Stanley, I'm maddeningly, desperately sad for the rest of us, too."

"I know," Stanley said. "I understand. But C.J.?"

"Yes?"

"You don't have to be furious with yourself. You can be furious with the shooters and what they've done to Josh, to all of you. You can be furious with me for making you go through this. Lay it on me, I can take it. You can be furious with the bullets, and you can be furious with the aftermath, and you can be furious that we live in a world where this kind of pain is possible. But don't waste your time or your energy directing all of that well-justified fury inward. You've just been doing the best you can."

C.J. wasn't crying. She hadn't cried in months, really, not since a couple nights after the shooting, when they knew Josh was going to make it. She'd been crumpled up on the floor of Toby's office, with her arms wrapped around Toby's neck, and her face buried in his shoulder, and she'd been sobbing in a visceral way that seemed like it would never end.

"Toby," she had choked out, "does it ever get easier?"

"No," Toby had said, and she could hear the apology in his rough voice. He'd been crying, too. "You just get stronger. I swear to God, C.J. We'll get stronger."

No, C.J. wasn't crying in front of these strangers, even though her eyes were wet. She was strong, now, or at least strong _er_. Christ, she had to be.

"Thank you," she told Stanley. "Thank you very much for that."

"It's just the truth, C.J." He smiled, a little wider this time. "Really, though. We can take a break."

"No offense, but I'd like to get out of here sooner rather than later," C.J. said, and now, Stanley outright laughed.

"Fair enough," he said. "So, to recap, why would it have eaten at Josh so much, if one of you had almost died?"

"About a year ago, Josh got this card," C.J. said. "And...okay, whatever I say, you two can't repeat it, right? Not to anybody?"

"That's right. Everything you tell us is strictly confidential."

"You could be subpoenaed, though."

"We aren't going to write this part down, C.J."

"That's not quite good enough." C.J sighed, trying to decide. In the end, her worry for Josh won. "All right, let's put it this way: hypothetically, Josh may have gotten a card that prioritized his safety in the event of an attack on the country. Hypothetically, he may have been quite distressed when he figured out that none of his friends had been issued this same hypothetical card."

"I take your hypothetical point," Stanley said. "Go on."

"That day, I had noticed he was acting a little jumpy. Later on, when I went to his office, he was listening to 'Ave Maria,' and he told me about the card. He said he couldn't be my friend and have me not know. I asked him if he'd been upset about it, and he said yes, and then he started talking about the end of the world, how it was going to be...God, I almost don't remember. Something about the smallpox virus? Regardless, he was very upset, and he wanted me to listen to this song with him, and I just thought: he is genuinely the kind of person who would walk through fire for anyone he loves. And he never sets down that worry he's carrying around."

"What did Josh hypothetically do about the card?" Stanley asked.

"He told me he gave it back," C.J. said. "He told me later, weeks later, I think. He said he didn't want it."

Stanley Keyworth, odd man that he was, seemed satisfied with this. He thanked C.J. for her time, and shook her hand, and gave her his number (just in case), and asked if she'd please send in either Donna Moss or Toby Ziegler. Before C.J. knew it, she was in the hall, clutching that scrap of paper, wandering off to find Toby. She wasn't sure she could look Donna in the eye today.

Toby wasn't in his office, but C.J. followed the distinctive sound of blaring Christmas music, and found him standing in Sam's. Sam was holding a radio. Toby was peering at him, brow furrowed, and when C.J. said, "Hey, Toby?" both men both looked shaken.

"Yeah?" he called over the swell of the song.

"They're asking for you," she said. "The ATVA people."

Sam set the radio on the desk and sank into his chair. He seemed determined not to hear this exchange, and C.J. remembered how dazed he'd been earlier, coming to tell her it was her turn. He'd stuttered, which was not something Sam Seaborn ever did.

"All right," Toby said, moving towards her. She made to get out of his way, but he caught her arm, leaned in until his mouth was just beside her ear, and whispered: "Sit with Sam? Just for a few minutes."

"Yeah," she whispered back. "Good luck."

Toby squeezed her elbow and disappeared. C.J. slipped across the room, let herself collapse into the chair on the other side of the desk, let herself slump, let her eyes flutter shut, let the music (now Bing Crosby's "I'll Be Home for Christmas") rise around her, let herself think: _what if it hadn't just been his hand?_

"I hate this." Sam almost had to shout to be heard. "I hate this so much I could break something."

"I know," C.J. said, and then the tears were brimming, hot and furious and insistent, and all she could see was Josh, bleeding on the pavement, and Josh, thin and broken in the hospital bed, and Josh, wearing pajamas three sizes too big, and Josh, triumphant after some victory, beaming and whooping and calling her Claudia Jean. Josh, Josh, Josh. C.J. reached blindly for Sam across the desk, and he caught her hand.

They sat there, fingers tangled together, listening to the song build. If Sam noticed she was crying, he didn't seem to mind.


	4. IV

**IV.**

"What matters is precisely this; the unspoken at the edge of the spoken."

― Virginia Woolf

* * *

"It was the music," Toby said, and this, at least, he felt sure about. _Why_ and _how_ , he couldn't have guessed at. _What_ was all he had. "Josh was going out of his mind about the music."

"What music?"

"The Christmas music in the lobby. I've been hiring people to play there all month. Anything the musicians collect goes to whatever charity they pick, they play joyously on throughout the mornings and evenings, and in this way, I manage to keep the locals happy. You wouldn't believe the things I was accused of when there was no music last year. They called me the Grinch."

"I didn't hear any music today," Stanley Keyworth said.

"Yes, well, I canceled it." Toby pinched the bridge of his nose. "In light of, you know. Certain events."

"You canceled the music because of Josh?"

"Because he was clearly distraught at the Christmas party while Yo-Yo Ma was playing, yes."

"Distraught how?"

"How the hell should I know?" Toby demanded. Before Stanley could respond, Toby took a breath, adding: "I just mean that he was...I can't describe it. Shaking. Clearly in a great amount of pain. The song ended, and he stumbled out of there about as quickly as he could without actually sprinting."

"I see." Stanley glanced at his trainee, and she nodded, almost imperceptibly. "This was Friday, the same day that Josh had a meeting in the Oval Office?"

"I wasn't there," Toby said, "but yes."

"Okay. Now, to back up—when was the first time you remember Josh seeming angry about the music?"

"The very first day it was there. I'd hired a brass quintet," Toby answered, rubbing his forehead. "He was visibly uncomfortable and quite audibly irritated. I thought it was just a, I don't know, a Josh thing. He spends a decent chunk of time navigating his own neuroses. I assumed it would pass."

"This would have been about two, three weeks ago?" Stanley asked, rustling through a pile of paper sitting beside a folder. He had a notebook, too.

"Three weeks ago, yes."

"Before or after the pilot?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Before or after Captain Robert Cano committed suicide?" Stanley said, with an urgency that made Toby's stomach twist. He tried to think.

"Before," Toby decided, after several moments. "It was that same day, I think, but it was definitely before. It was morning, and Josh wasn't dealing with that background stuff until midday."

"Okay," Stanley said, exhaling softly. "Okay, Toby. That's important. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Toby said, although he wasn't sure for what. "I hope it's helpful."

"Very much so," Stanley said, checking his notes again. "Now, there was an incident in the bullpen on the nineteenth, I believe. C.J. Cregg says Josh yelled at everyone to keep the noise down. She also says you were there."

"I was. That was the first time I became truly concerned."

"Why was that?"

"There were bagpipes," Toby began, and Stanley winced. "Yes, I know, but they were cheap, and not half-bad, if you want to know my opinion, which I'm certain you don't. At any rate, Josh was riled up, yelling at me that they couldn't play in the lobby. He said he could hear the sirens all over the damn building."

"The sirens," Stanley said slowly.

"The sirens. He realized what he'd said and tried to cover himself. He said he meant the music."

"I'm sure he thought he did."

"He went to his office, and about thirty seconds later, he stuck his head back out and started shouting at everyone to shut up."

"That's not like Josh?"

"Nothing's like Josh," Toby muttered. "Josh moves at about five hundred miles per hour. The whole point of him is that you don't know what he's going to do next."

"So...it _was_ like Josh, then? To randomly scream at his employees?"

Toby chewed on that one for a minute.

"Fine," he said, waving a hand. "It wasn't like Josh. He can be unpredictable—obnoxious, even—but he's not...he's doesn't snap that way. I've seen him unhinged. I've seen him fuck up on national television, more than once, simply because he couldn't quit running his mouth. I've seen him whine, and I've seen him sad, and I've seen him righteously pissed. I'd never seen him lose it before, though, if that's what you'd call it."

"Let me ask you this," Stanley said, regarding Toby with some interest. "What did you think was happening to Josh?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've been concerned for a little while now. Your deputy says you've mentioned Josh's behavior. You saw him shout in the bullpen, and you saw him deteriorating at this party, and I want to know what you thought about it."

"What I thought," Toby said, working to keep his voice from crescendoing, "is that this guy had a bullet in his chest six months ago, and we're all trying to carry on as if he's fine. Of course he's not _fine_. How could he be fine? I'm certainly not fine. I almost took a leave of absence, and I was just there, just sitting there with him, shouting for the ambulance. It's not like _I_ got hit. It's not like these racist monsters tried to lynch _me_. And yet, Josh Lyman and the President and Charlie Young show up for work every day, and not for nothing, but maybe we shouldn't keep acting like that was the very best of ideas. If sometimes I can't—if I can't bear it, if it feels like this for me, what do you suppose it takes to get Josh through a day? How about the President of the United States? How about Charlie, this kid who just, what, fell in love with the wrong guy's daughter? How does he put on his tie and walk into this building every morning without wanting to burn it the hell down? That's what I wonder, every day. And when I saw Josh going through whatever that was at the Christmas party, all I could think then was _it's about goddamn time_."

The words seemed to ring throughout the quiet room, and as usual, Toby had started yelling before he'd consciously decided to. He knew what it sounded like, knew that maybe Stanley Keyworth would go back to Leo and report that the entirety of the White House senior staff needed immediate ATVA sessions of their own.

"Toby," Stanley said, leaning back in his chair, "I think you just might be right about that."

Toby nodded.

"You were with Josh when he got shot?"

"No, I just—I found him."

"And you called for help?"

"Yes."

"How long did you stay with him?"

"We rode with him to the hospital, the three of us. Sam, C.J., me. They let us cram into the ambulance rather than waste time trying to tell us it was against the rules."

"That must have been terrifying."

"I honestly don't remember most of it. I just remember all the blood," Toby said. It was true. There'd been so much of it, soaking Josh's clothes, and dripping on the floor, and running down C.J.'s temple, and smudged across Sam's neck, and staining the cuffs of Toby's shirt. Sometimes, he would still wake up choking on the smell, the viscous memory of it sticky against his palms.

"You said that you often feel it's too much to bear," Stanley said, staring directly at Toby. "It _is_ too much, what Josh and the President and Charlie went through. What you all went through, Toby. It's not nothing. And it wasn't wrong of you to want a leave of absence."

"I didn't say it was wrong of me," Toby said, and looked away.

"No." Stanley's voice was still laced with that same calm intensity. "I guess you didn't."

They moved on. Toby answered five more questions about Josh and his slow unraveling over the past several weeks, including whether or not he'd known Josh and the suicidal pilot shared a birthday (no), and if he'd asked Josh how he cut his hand (also no, as Toby wasn't in the business of asking questions he didn't want the answers to). It could have been fifteen minutes or it could have been sixty: the time crawled by like it had something to prove, and when it was finally over, when Stanley Keyworth and Kaytha Trask had shaken his hand and sent him on his way, Toby felt as though he'd been wrung out like a sponge.

Going to retrieve Donna Moss was the worst part, though. Toby walked slowly, his hands in his pockets, watching his feet, dodging around the few staffers who were lucky enough to be at work on the Sunday before a holiday. He tried to concentrate on counting his steps.

Step, step, step. Four, five six. Step, step, step. Ten, eleven, twelve.

If he did that, if he did only that, he wouldn't have to think about Donna's wide-eyed face, cut clearly apart from the rest of that endless, bloody night. Toby had never seen someone shatter before. He'd never been responsible for that kind of devastation, so he didn't know, couldn't have known, what it would be like.

If Toby had known, he wouldn't have done it.

He hadn't been kind enough. Toby had been disconcertingly angry that there was a person left in the world who didn't know what it felt like to watch Josh Lyman dying. Donna had just been standing there in that waiting room, so breathlessly ignorant. Toby had almost hated her for it. He told her quickly, without fuss, because C.J. would have danced around it, because Sam still couldn't speak, because it needed to come from one of them, and as so often seemed to be the case, Toby could find the words.

So: _Josh was hit._

Step, step, step. Step. Toby was losing count.

 _Hit with what?_

Step, step step, step, step. Goddammit.

Donna Moss, from Madison, Wisconsin, with her sensible shoes and her earnest, bright charm, and her quick mouth. Quicker even than Josh's, sometimes. Toby had liked her, grudgingly, from the start. Something about the way Josh didn't impress her, not even when he puffed himself up and whipped out all of his best vocabulary words. Something about her good intentions and random trivia. Something about how Josh seemed to run smoother when she was around, how a quelling glare or hand on the elbow from her could bring his rapid boil back down to a simmer.

Yes, Toby had always liked Josh's assistant, who missed nothing and took very little shit, who could be flexible, ready to laugh, until a situation demanded more. And if Donna sometimes tripped right over her own naivete, if she was nervous, awkward, clumsy, unsure—she was also grounded, even endearing, in her way. Only two things really wrong with her, Toby had often thought.

One: she was oblivious to her own potential.

Two: she was badly disguising her ridiculous schoolgirl crush.

Toby didn't like to be made to notice another person's feelings. He didn't like that old cliché, the secretary trotting adoringly after her jackass of a boss. He didn't like all the coy banter, and he especially didn't like the idea of a woman as capable as Donna doodling little hearts around Josh's name. A woman like that—who deserved her? Certainly not an idiot like Josh Lyman.

 _He was shot, in the chest._

Toby had thought he understood all about Donna's feelings. He'd found them uncomplicated and silly. Inconvenient. Frustrating. Incomprehensible, especially on days when Josh was particularly, infuriatingly Josh-like.

And God, that night, with the blood itching against his fingernails, the shock of Josh falling forward on the sidewalk, the whine of the sirens, the bursting of glass, the pop-pop-pop of gunfire (why did it never sound like the world ending—why, always, did Toby first think of fireworks?), the bitter exhaustion of waiting and waiting and waiting and _waiting_ : Toby hadn't understood anything, least of all that things could get worse.

 _I don't understand. Is…is it serious_?

Serious, Toby had thought, blinking at Donna in the waiting room. _Is it serious?_ He'd been too tired to move. Too tired to breathe. His mind had been fuzzy, skipping back again and again to Josh, hands clasped to his chest, staring up at Toby with wordless fear. That same fear had seemed to be spreading through Toby; he could taste it, could feel it pumping through his veins.

 _Yes. It's critical._

Of course he'd had to tell her. Of course she'd had to know. But he could have been kinder, Toby thought to himself now, eyes fixed on his scuffed shoes. Why hadn't he gotten up and just put a hand on the poor girl's shoulder, the way C.J. had done (so tentatively, as though with the slightest pressure, Donna might crack)? Why had nobody been able to really look at her?

It was because they all knew, Toby realized. In that moment, all of them knew Donna's heart, and none of them could bear the weight of it.

Toby had just been so _tired_ , and the night was already fizzling into a bleary dawn, and he'd seen—when Donna brought her hand to her mouth, when she collapsed into that chair, when she sat there for hours, unblinking, until an eerie calm descended over her—that there were many things about perky, uncomplicated, doe-eyed Donna Moss Toby had yet to learn. He'd watched her later as she stood at the window of the operating theater. A crush, Toby had assumed for nearly two years. Something easy to shrug off, roll your eyes at, ignore, find pitiable. So _obvious_.

Except Donna Moss, until that very moment, had been fooling them all. She was more clever than Toby would ever have given her credit for, hiding behind the gigging, hiding behind all the back-and-forth and straightening of ties and arching of eyebrows. A crush, they'd all thought. Just a little crush. Nothing to get excited about. No alarm bells sounding; no transferring her to a new department. A little crush like that, anyone could forget, and Donna, after all, was young. She had a date every other weekend and she never let her gaze linger on Josh for even a few seconds longer than was appropriate. A crush, Sam and C.J. and Toby had all agreed: _harmless, really_ — _just wait until she meets another guy who can keep up with her, someone her own age_ — _she could have her pick_ — _Josh is utterly oblivious, anyway, as usual_ — _of course she'll get over it_ — _this is nothing, nothing at all._

Toby had paused there in the doorway, watching Donna's reflection in the glass as she pulled at her White House ID, watching the way she couldn't stop watching the surgery. It looked like she was holding her breath.

Donna, Toby had known with abrupt and painful clarity, did not have a crush on Josh. That was the wrong word altogether.

Toby should have been kinder, in that waiting room. He should have gotten out of his chair.

Back in the present, on an unbearably sunny December day, Toby finally found himself in the policy bullpen. The door to Josh's office was closed, and Donna was sitting at her desk, staring at her computer with her arms folded tightly across her chest. Toby took a breath and went to stand beside her.

"Hi," he said, clasping his hands behind his back. "They're ready for you." Donna looked up at him without flinching, and rose to her feet.

"Which room?" Donna asked, squaring her shoulders and smoothing her sweater. Toby recognized this part, the gearing up. He'd seen her do it before, when Josh was sending her off to the Hill with some impossible task, when there was a pile of work and exactly zero time in which to do it, when there were Republicans wandering through the West Wing, when Josh had been recovering and Donna had seen fit to write (and enforce) an actual list of rules. That look on her face meant only one thing. Donna was spoiling for a fight, and she was damn well going to win.

So many things Toby didn't understand. He didn't understand about guns, or that pervasive fear, or how to help shoulder Sam's guilt, or how to ease C.J.'s numb fury, or how to support Charlie, or how to possibly communicate to Josh even a fraction of the fierce respect and loyalty Toby held for him. Toby didn't understand how to stop hating himself for how much everything hurt. He didn't understand why the sadness wouldn't go away. He didn't understand _why_ , period.

But Toby thought he was beginning to understand a lot about love—namely, that it could be found in the most unusual places. In a gruff handshake. In music. In silence. In pointless rules. In grand, sweeping gestures, and forgotten, dusty corners. In worry. In the flash of a too-wide, too-quick smile. In guilt, and fury, and sorrow.

In Donna Moss and all the things she had to hide. She was the one who had guessed, Leo had told Toby the other day. _Donna says there's something seriously wrong with Josh._

A crush. Harmless. Nothing, nothing at all.

"Toby?" Donna asked. Toby had just been staring at her, hands still clasped behind his back, jaw clenched far too tight. "Which room?"

"I'm sorry," he said, shifting from foot to foot. And then, because somebody needed to say it: "Donna, we're all lucky to have you. Especially Josh." Donna stared at him with those wide, guarded eyes. For an instant, her determination flickered.

"Thanks," she whispered, and hugged him. Toby meant to put his arms around her, but she pulled back before he could, turned away, and asked, for the third time, "Which room?"

"Come on," Toby said, with as much kindness as he could muster. "I'll walk you."

They set off together down the hall, Donna trailing just a few steps behind. They didn't speak, but that was all right. There was nothing left to say.


	5. V

**V.**

"You cannot save people. You can only love them."

― Anaïs Nin

* * *

Donna had this recurring nightmare.

In the dream, she was seven again, running barefoot through the New York woods. Her father's sister had a house on Seneca Lake, and the whole Moss side of the family would usually meet there for a week sometime in July. There'd be boating, and water skiing, and bonfires, and parades, and dripping cones of frozen custard (Swiss chocolate, sprinkled with chopped almonds). The air would be warm and thick, almost solid, and they'd all practically live in bathing suits and sunburnt shoulders. Donna's older brothers, Marc and Tony, would take turns throwing the little kids into the water from the docks. They were all good swimmers, and that part of the lake wasn't too deep. The adults didn't worry. Why would they worry? Why would anyone ever worry, when the water was so clear, and the older boys were watching, and the kids could all backstroke and doggy-paddle their way out of anything, even the babies? Even Donna. Even Lucy, the four-year-old.

And then, one fourth of July, Marc (who was nearly sixteen), slipped off the dock halfway through throwing Donna in. Donna hit the water hard, belly-flopping. She came up gasping for breath, giggling and shrieking Marc's name, except he wasn't on the surface yet. Tony, only thirteen, was crouched on the dock, frowning down into the water.

"Donna," Tony had called, "is Marc playing? Is he holding his breath?"

Donna had ducked under water and opened her eyes. She saw the blood spreading first.

She didn't remember the next part, except that she started screaming, choking on the lake. Next, there was Tony diving in, dragging Marc out onto the gravelly shore. The littlest cousins crying. All the blood, the jagged gash on the side of Marc's head, how pale and still he seemed. "He's not breathing!" Tony had shouted. "I don't think he's breathing!" Her wild-eyed brother had staggered to his feet, still yelling. He'd grabbed Donna's skinny arms, told her, "Run. Run, run, run—get Dad, get Mom, get anybody—" before pushing her up off into the woods. She hadn't been wearing her flip-flops. One of the straps of her swimsuit was twisted. Donna couldn't catch her breath, but she ran, and she tripped, and she scraped both her knees, and she got back up. She kept running through the trees, crashing through the dirt and the pine needles, until she got to the house and banged through the door, screeching for her dad.

That was the dream: the running. The calling for Dad.

Except in the dream, Donna made no noise. In the dream, she'd open her mouth in a soundless scream that nobody in the house could hear. They kept playing their cards and drinking their beer, and they didn't look up, wouldn't look up, even when Donna threw herself at them.

In real life, of course, the words had tumbled out of her (" _It's Marc! Daddy, come quick. Tony says he's not breathing!"_ ), and every adult in the house had sprinted down to the lake. Her Uncle Jimmy was a retired paramedic, and he started compressions just in time, got Marc coughing up water right when the ambulance came. Marc, who had hit his head on a sharp piece of rock, got eleven stitches, a concussion, several kinds of painkillers, two nights in the hospital to monitor the fluid in his lungs, and a great story to endear him to the pretty, long-legged waitress at the local diner. It was fine. It was all fine.

But Donna still dreamed. She still felt Marc's hands fumbling around her ribcage as he stumbled off the dock. She still saw his warped, colorless face, and the dark stain matting down his curls; still heard the crack in Tony's very young, very scared voice. She could still feel the way her heart had seemed to pound right through her as she ran through those woods. She could still taste the almosts. The what-ifs.

Watching Josh over the past few weeks had been a lot like being caught in an endless rerun of that nightmare, right down to the infuriating silence. How fitting, Donna thought, as Stanley Keyworth shook her hand and told her about ATVA and picked up his pen. How fitting that the only thing she could do for Josh was shout for someone else to come, and come quick.

"So, Donna," Stanley said, looking first at his folder and then up at her. "Kaytha and I have learned a lot about Josh Lyman today."

"Have you talked to everyone else?"

"We have. You're the last one." Stanley flipped to the first page of a large stack of papers. "How long have you known Josh?"

"Almost three years. I started working for him during the campaign," Donna said, studying the dull sheen of the table. "I'm his assistant."

"So, you know him very well. You work with him every day."

"That's right."

"And how long have you been concerned about Josh?" Stanley asked. The piercing look he gave Donna was enough to set her teeth on edge.

"Months," Donna said. "But it didn't get bad until a few weeks ago."

"Yes," Stanley said quietly. "Three weeks ago, the pilot committed suicide. Three weeks ago, Josh got angry about the holiday music in the lobby. We heard from Toby Ziegler that he was upset for at least two weeks before he yelled at everyone in the bullpen. We heard from Sam Seaborn and Leo McGarry that Josh was fixated on the fact that he and the pilot had the same birthday. We also heard that Josh shouted at the President of the United States, and that shortly before this happened, you went to Leo and told him that something was wrong with Josh."

Now, Stanley leaned forward, and although Donna wanted to squirm under his gaze, she didn't. She made herself look at him. She made herself breathe. "Donna, I have all the facts. What I want to know now is why you were the one who said something to Leo. I want to know what made you come forward, instead of Toby or C.J. or Sam. What did you see that the others didn't, or maybe couldn't?"

Everything, Donna wanted to say. _I saw everything._

"It wasn't anything specific," Donna finally murmured.

"I see," Stanley said, and he did seem to. He was still staring at her calmly, in a way that made Donna feel flimsy and exposed. "What was it, then?"

"Like you said, I know Josh well." Donna focused now on keeping her voice steady. "I'm attuned to him, I guess you'd say. I have to be if I want to do my job. Sometimes, he doesn't eat or sleep, works himself into a stupor, and I have to be able to judge whether he's going to pass out in the middle of the Oval Office or whether he can drag himself through a couple more hours if he has a strong enough cup of coffee. So, when I say I know him, it's not just that I can tell you everything that's on his desk, or how he likes his burgers cooked. We also talk. We talk a lot."

"What do you talk about?"

"Work, obviously. But we're friends, too. You know, we talk about what's going on in our lives, who we're dating, what movies are good. Family stuff. Regular stuff. And Josh gets excited about things easily…he was on this theoretical physics kick a couple of months ago, and he made me read a book about it just so we could argue about string theory. He never shuts up about baseball. I know more about the Mets' stats over the past thirty years than probably any person should."

"I'm a Giants fan myself," Stanley said. "But, okay, Donna. I think I see what you're getting at. You're an integral part of Josh's life in a way that maybe the others aren't. You would have noticed a shift right away."

"Yes."

"And what was this shift?"

Donna had tried to explain this twice before, and she still wasn't sure she had the words. There had been a series of packed, crazy days recently, the kind of days that ignited Josh. The kind of days that always seemed to bring out the best pieces of who he was: his snappiness, his boundless energy, his quick mind, his attention to the subtlety of the details (and how they all fit into the grand political scheme of things). Josh did his most effective work under pressure. Not only that—he was most _alive_ under pressure. Donna had always admired that about him, and had learned to love the rush of it.

But those days, the ones when Josh should have been at his loudest, brightest, sharpest, fastest setting? Those days, Josh had been quiet, tired and distracted. He'd moved heavily. There was no bellowing, no frenetic brainstorming in the corridors. The job got done (after all, Josh Lyman on a bad day was still on par with most people on their best), but Josh took no pleasure in it. He fumbled through a meeting with a senate aide who was notoriously easy to intimidate, and when that was over, when he'd barely cobbled a deal together, Josh didn't freak out. Donna had been waiting for the frantic, self-loathing play-by-play. Instead, Josh just stared blankly through her and shrugged when she asked if he was okay.

"Sure I am," he'd said. "I'm fine."

Then he'd gone into his office and quietly shut the door. Josh pretty much never shut the door. He said that when he did, he felt like he was missing everything.

Donna had stared after him, a sour taste spreading through her mouth, before she gathered herself up and went to find C.J.

Stanley Keyworth cleared his throat from across the table, and Donna blinked, shook her head until the conversation swam back into focus. "I'm sorry. I was just trying to figure out how to describe what happened. He just—stopped."

"Stopped what, exactly?"

"Josh moves all the time. One thing to the next thing to the next to the next to the next. Even when he's sitting down, he's doodling, or fidgeting or something. And he's never not thinking. For the past month, he's had these moments where it seems like he's on pause. He stops. Stops moving, stops laughing, stops everything. He's barely even awake. And when he _does_ move, it's because he's stressed or angry. He gets jumpy. He says mean things in a way that Josh just wouldn't. Not to me, at least."

Stanley tilted his head, then rustled through his pile of papers again, until he found the one he wanted. He tapped at something in the middle of the page with his pen, and then read aloud, "'Josh doesn't get angry at people he cares about.'"

Donna swallowed. "Who said that?"

"That's not important. What is important is that this person is also of the opinion that Josh is glad he was the one who got shot, rather than any of his friends. Josh, this person feels, would have been riddled with guilt if anyone he loved had been gravely hurt. Do you agree?"

"Who said that?" Donna whispered again, harder this time. Her throat felt almost raw.

"It really doesn't matter," Stanley told her. "Donna, you're a person Josh cares about, and you care about him. You work with him every day. You noticed something was wrong first. I'm trying to figure this guy out now, because when he's in this room, he's not going to want me to do that. Nobody ever wants to be figured out, of course, but especially not a person like Josh. So, tell me. Do you ever think Josh is glad he got shot, instead of Toby Ziegler or Sam Seaborn or C.J. Cregg or Leo McGarry...or you?"

"I wasn't even there! I didn't..." Donna hadn't expected to feel this way, although she had expected quite a lot.

"Take your time," Stanley said, and when he smiled at her with something shrewdly kind working across his face, Donna knew. She knew that Stanley had her figured out, that he'd probably had her figured out before she even walked in the room. It stung.

"Yes, I think Josh is glad," Donna said, staring at her hands, which she'd tangled together beneath the table. "He's always been able to live with his own pain, but he's not good at living with other people's. He never stops being afraid someone he loves is going to die. You have to understand this about Josh if you want to help him, Stanley, because a lot of people really don't: he doesn't think of himself. He never thinks of himself. Everything he does is for the President, or Leo, or the country, or because it's the right thing. So, yes, he's glad, and no, he doesn't get angry at the people he cares about. You know why? Because he always, _always_ thinks it's his fault."

Stanley nodded. "Okay, Donna. Thank you. I understand."

"Good." She wished away the hot flush spreading across her cheeks. "Are you going to help him?"

"I'm going to try," Stanley said gently.

"Somebody has to help him," Donna snapped. "I can't. I've tried. I tried to tell C.J., once, but she was busy, and I didn't know how to say it, so I didn't try to make her understand, I didn't fight hard enough, I didn't get her to go to Leo or the President. She told me Josh was fine, that he was probably just adjusting to being back at work full-time, and I wanted her to be right so badly that I let it go. And I just watched him. I tried to get him to talk to me, but he wouldn't, and he wouldn't listen when I told him to go home, and he threw away the food I tried to make him eat, and he didn't look me in the eye, and I wanted to tell Toby or Sam but I still didn't even know how to say it, and I watched this happen to him, and I almost didn't tell Leo in time, and I couldn't stop the bullet, and I can't stop this, and now Josh is sitting in his office and he's hurt again and _somebody_ has to help him _._ "

"Donna—"

"What do you need from me? Tell me what you need, and I'll give it to you. Tell me how to help him, or do it yourself, or get someone else. I don't care what it is. Just do something. Please."

"The only thing I need is for you to take a couple of deep breaths," Stanley said, and then he nodded to his trainee. Kaytha Trask got up and quietly slipped out into the hall. "Kaytha's going to get you some water, okay? I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pushed you quite this hard."

"You didn't push me," Donna said, swiping a hand across her face. " _I'm_ sorry. I just wanted to do more for him. I could have done more for him."

"Like what?" Stanley asked. "Tell me what you were supposed to do to help Josh Lyman, other than what you've already done? Are you a psychiatrist?"

"No."

"How about a doctor?"

"No."

"Did you study trauma intensively for nearly a decade? No? I didn't think so. Donna, you did everything you possibly could have. In fact, you did more. You know, even if you and C.J. had gone to see Leo the very moment you first started to get concerned, it wouldn't have mattered. What would Josh have done? He would have told everyone it was just a bad day. He would have shaken it off. And then, he would have been very, very careful not to let on exactly how much worse things were getting. I mean, it's possible he would have gotten help then, but it's difficult, sometimes, to get through to a person who won't even admit there's anything wrong. Josh can't deny something's wrong with his hand, can he? Sure, maybe he can deny how it happened, but the blood's right there for everyone to see. He can put a bandage on it, and slowly, it's going to start to heal. It's different with trauma. You have to look quite a bit harder for it, and the things you use to patch it up are invisible."

"I really tried," Donna whispered.

"You did more than try," Stanley said. "You did it. You helped him. All of you helped him. And now it's my turn to take a swing at it, so that's what I'm going to do. The truth is, Donna, this kind of thing doesn't have a cure. There's no fix. Like everybody else, Josh is going to need to learn how to help himself, and he's going to keep needing help from the people in his life. All I can tell you is that one day, he'll know when to ask for it."

"Can I do anything else for him?" Donna asked, wincing at the desperation in her own voice.

"Well, you can keep letting him talk your ear off about the Mets and boss you around," Stanley said, capping his pen. "And you can keep watching out for him. He's a lucky guy, from all I've heard. He's got an entire White House full of people worried sick about him."

"But is that enough?" Donna pressed.

"Of course, Donna." Stanley smiled, gesturing at the open page of his notebook. "Love is always enough."

Donna couldn't have told Stanley what it was like to love Josh Lyman, and she certainly didn't want to. It was a complicated, messy business (an impossible business, really). Josh was disaster in a wrinkled suit. He was a hundred thoughtless comments wrapped up in Ivy League smarm, condescending even when he thought he was being generous. Josh was all prickly observations too early in the morning and loud arguments too late at night; he was every last thing Donna had sworn off on that endless drive to New Hampshire three years ago.

And God, he was also so much more. He was kind whenever it counted, and impatiently _good_ , and always eager to keep being better, and never satisfied with the baseline of anything. She'd look at him sometimes, trying to pick apart the thing about him that simmered through her like adrenaline, but if there was an answer, it never came. All Donna knew was that she had never met anybody like him, and that she never wanted to again. One Josh Lyman was enough for her heart. Another might actually crush it.

No, Donna couldn't have explained it, but she could feel the magnitude of it. She could feel how it both fortified and crippled her. She wished there was anything to do with it but try to ride it out.

Donna thought about that while she drank her glass of water, while Stanley thanked her, while she offered to send in some coffee, while she was walking towards Josh's office, while the world seemed to rush by around her. In a way, she was running through the woods again, stumbling over her own useless feet, the sharp taste of copper thick against her tongue. She'd been dreaming the past few weeks, opening her mouth to no words, no breath. She was done with that, the fear. Done with the waiting. Done with the nightmare, and done with the nervous watching, and done with letting him have his space, and done with trying not to feel this way. Now, she was awake. Now, the scream had sound.

The door to Josh's office was open again. Margaret had been in with him all morning, briefing him on a random selection of Leo's strategies for the new year, pretending this wasn't an excuse, pretending that it wasn't because nobody wanted to leave Josh alone for longer than ten minutes at a time. Donna peeked in, watching Josh stare out the window into the watery sunlight. Margaret wasn't there at the moment, but her pile of folders and her notebook both were, scattered across Josh's desk and piled on one of the chairs. Donna slipped inside, and Josh spun away from the window with his mouth half-open. He looked very young. He'd been cagey and sharp-tongued all morning, but in that moment, when he looked at Donna, she could see him. It was the same way she had seen him the night his father died. This was Josh, at a loss—Josh, terrified.

"You're late for your meeting," Donna said, forcing her voice into its normal briskness. "They're waiting for you."

"My meeting," Josh repeated.

"Yes," she said, and then, because she couldn't help herself, she crossed the room and reached for his hand. Josh let her take it for the first time since that morning, when she'd first noticed him trying to hide it in his coat pocket. Donna examined it, running the tip of a finger over the edge of the bandage, before she glanced steadily up at him and asked, "A glass, Josh?"

"I set it down too hard," he mumbled. When she smoothed her thumb against the heel of his hand, he inhaled sharply. Donna let go.

"Your schedule's cleared for the rest of the day," she told him, turning away because it was easier than trying to look at him and keep from crying. "You know where to go?"

"Yeah. Leo told me."

"You're late," she said again, and then Josh ran his good hand over his face, nodded once, and strode out of the room, brushing past Donna, leaving her standing alone in the familiar glow of the office.

She didn't know what to do. There were certainly things to organize. Letters to send. She could return most of the messages on Josh's voicemail and put together his schedule for the rest of the week. There was a pile of paperwork on her desk waiting for routing or filing, and she'd promised to help Ginger with the new e-mail client.

Donna wandered in the direction of her desk, but she took an abrupt, purposeful detour. She didn't want to sit down and get back to work like nothing was wrong, the way she had been for weeks. She couldn't bear the thought of it. It made her feel furious, somehow, to imagine carrying stoically on. Donna wanted to feel something, and she didn't want to feel it alone.

Toby had been kind earlier, walking with her to meet Stanley; Donna thought he might mind slightly less than usual if she turned up wanting company. She walked to his office without thinking too closely about it, arms folded, head ducked—but then, she heard the music and voices coming from Sam's.

"...one day at a time," Donna could hear Leo saying from behind the cracked door, with a weariness that startled her. "We'll help him. Even if he doesn't want us to."

"How could we not have seen it?" Sam asked, his voice rising over the chorus of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen."

"Sam," Leo began, but Sam slammed something down on his desk.

"I'm not kidding. How the hell didn't we—it should never have come to this. I should have done something."

"Done what, Sam?" Toby asked softly. Donna had to press closer to the door to hear him properly. "What would you have done?"

"Followed him home! Insisted he talk to me. Made sure he didn't...didn't..."

"I know," C.J. cut in. "God, I know. But it's done, and there's no use getting tangled up in the if-onlys. You know, Donna came to me weeks ago, before even the pilot thing, and she told me something seemed off about Josh. I really thought it was just the stress of coming back to work. If I'd listened to her then, who knows? But I didn't, and half-killing myself with guilt won't help Josh, or change what happened. We need to focus on what we can do for him _now_. What does he need _now_?"

"A time machine," Sam muttered.

"Stitches, most likely," Leo offered.

"Therapy," Toby said. "Lots of it, I assume."

"Friends." Donna took a step forward into the office. The others looked up at her from where they'd gathered around Sam's desk. "Which I think means us."

"That's the one," C.J. said, and then she got to her feet and pulled Donna into a hug.

"Well, I guess he needs the therapy and stitches, too," Donna said against C.J.'s shoulder. "But mostly us."

"I hope that's enough," Sam said. Donna pulled back from C.J. and looked at Sam, at his pale face and hunched shoulders, and once she'd looked at him, she had to look at them all. At Leo, who was smiling with one corner of his mouth quirked up, sad-eyed and knowing. At Toby, grimacing down at his shoes, his hands stuffed in his pockets. At C.J., who seemed to be warding off tears, a muscle working in her jaw as she blinked determinedly off into space.

Donna couldn't have told anyone what it was like to love Josh Lyman, but she knew that none of the people in that room needed her to try. They'd all been tripping through those woods with her, Donna realized, as she let her gaze flicker over all of them again. Since the shooting, they'd all been running for help—for Josh, and for Charlie, and for the President, and for themselves. This thing was bigger than all of them. It was a painfully lonely thing, too; it sucked away any joy, loomed like a guilty shadow. They'd been trying to ignore it, because what was the alternative? To acknowledge it seemed to give the feeling power, to give the guns and the hatred weight, to say to the shooters, "You win." It was almost as scary as the bullets.

Well, it could loom all it wanted. It could even hurt. It would probably keep hurting forever, and Donna thought she could learn to live with it—but to hell with the loneliness. To hell with the silence, for that matter.

"What are you all doing tomorrow?" Donna asked, looping her arm through C.J.'s. "I know it's Christmas, and this is probably silly, but...what are you all doing tomorrow?"

For a minute, nobody said anything, until Leo turned to Donna and asked, "What did you have in mind, kid?"

It wasn't much of an idea at all, but when Donna took a deep breath told and them about it, Sam turned down his radio, and C.J. beamed at her, and Leo looked unusually pleased, and even Toby cracked one his rare smiles. And yes, it still hurt. Stanley had been right that there was no easy fix. They would all need to let the wound breathe. They would all need to keep asking for help. And yes, Donna thought, as the music played softly on and they started to hammer out the details of her plan with the same fervor they'd use to snag a supreme court nomination, yes: together, they could be enough.

Stanley Keyworth had been right about that, too.


	6. EPILOGUE

**EPILOGUE**

"And I am out with lanterns, looking for myself."

—Emily Dickinson

* * *

Josh woke up on Christmas morning with the usual emptiness in the pit of his stomach and a brand new throbbing in his palm. He could feel the blood pulsing angrily against his stitches underneath the fresh bandage. It hurt a hell of a lot, although not quite as much as it had when the efficient young doctor at the ER had cleaned out the cut last night. It had taken her nearly an hour to pick out all the stray shards of glass. Josh could still hear the sound they'd made as they plinked against the metal tray; even now, it made him wince.

Groaning, Josh rolled over and reached for his alarm clock. Working odd hours for the past couple of years had permanently rewired his sleep cycle, and it was hard for him to avoid waking up much later than seven, even on a day off. This wasn't his typical day off, of course. He'd been heavily medicated last night, an unavoidable fact he was sickeningly reminded of when he read (and then re-read) the time: 10:38 AM. He hadn't slept like this since the shooting.

Josh sat up slowly, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his arm, and tried to remember how exactly he'd gotten into bed. Frowning, he thought back again to the stitches, and the doctor picking out the glass. Donna had been sitting next to him, talking to him about...owls? That couldn't be right, could it? But yes, he could remember now, Donna had been talking about this piece she'd read in the _Post_ on deforestation and how it was affecting the common barn owl's natural habitat—and did Josh know there were nineteen species of owls in North America, and actually, barn owls were a different _family_ of owls than the regular family of owl (the true owl), and did he know that barn owls were also sometimes called monkey-faced owls, and did Josh know most owls mated for life, and that when their mate died, the surviving owl often refused to eat or sleep and literally died of a broken heart?

"Is this supposed to be cheering me up?" Josh had demanded, looking over at Donna so he wouldn't have to stare at his hand.

"God, I hope not. Then I'd really be concerned about you." Donna had raised her eyebrows at him, although she hadn't quite glared. "This is because you've got a meeting with the National Wildlife Federation next Thursday, and I want you to listen to what they have to say about the owls. They need us, Josh."

"The owls need us?"

"Yes! They're very delicate, sensitive creatures. Imagine if someone came along and tore your home up out of the ground. That's what happening to these little guys right now! They deserve to be left alone to get on with their, you know. Owl stuff."

"Owl stuff."

"Don't mock. What did an owl ever do to you?"

"What? Nothing! It's just—since when are you so into owls? Have you ever even seen one in real life? Do you have some secret bird watching habit I don't know about? Is there a special spot downtown all your favorite owls hang out at?"

"Yes, Josh. The Beltway is known both for its deforested forests and its booming owl population."

"Hey, I'm kinda sorta wounded, here. I could do without the sass!"

"And I could do without your casual dismissal of the very real threat to the barn owls! For your information, I _have_ seen an owl in real life; there are plenty of them in Wisconsin. One even lived on my cousin's farm. We called him Bucky."

"The owl or your cousin?"

"You're not even a little bit cute."

"I think I'm adorable."

"Mr. Lyman?" the doctor cut in. She'd seemed to be biting back a grin. "We're all finished here."

"What?" Josh gaped at his hand, which had been neatly re-bandaged.

"Yes, you're all set. I'm going to give you a list of aftercare instructions for the stitches, and you'll need to follow-up with your GP in the next week or two. I'm also going to give you some Vicodin. You won't feel it now because of the numbing agent, but you're going to be in quite a bit of discomfort over the next couple of days. You'll want something to take the edge off."

That was an understatement. Josh didn't just want Vicodin: he wanted to slip into a mild coma. He couldn't say that to the doctor, though, so he'd just taken the pills she sent in with a paper cup of water, and then accepted the sample she gave him on the way out. By the time the cab Donna had flagged down for them pulled up in front of Josh's place, he'd been pretty out of it.

Everything had seemed so blurry—Donna paying the driver, and then helping Josh out to the curb and juggling his backpack for him, letting him lean on her as they slowly climbed the steps. Josh wasn't sure how long that had taken, or how long it had been to get inside, or how she'd gotten him out of his suit and down to just his boxers and t-shirt, but it had clearly happened. He should have felt more embarrassed about that, but the lines had gotten fuzzy when Donna had taken care of him after the shooting. He trusted her. He wouldn't have wanted anybody else with him.

Josh closed his eyes and frowned again, ignoring the sharp pain radiating through his arm. There'd been something else, hadn't there? Hadn't he thanked Donna? Yeah, he had; he'd mumbled some slurred nonsense at her, trying to tell her he appreciated what she'd been doing for him. _Thanks for the owls_ , he'd said. _Thanks for you._ And Donna had brushed her fingers across Josh's forehead, let them linger at his temple. Her touch had shivered through him. Usually, he would have tried not to notice that, or done something to deflect the moment, but last night, he hadn't had the energy to pretend he didn't want her hand exactly where it was. Josh had bent into her palm, and something tightly wound in the pit of his stomach began to slowly uncoil. It was like being able to breathe again.

"We're going to beat this, Josh," Donna had said into the darkness. Her fingers had been trailing into his hair.

How had she always been able to know what he needed to hear? It unsettled Josh. He still hadn't even told her about the diagnosis (fuck, he had a _diagnosis_ ). The only thing Josh had admitted to her on the cab ride to the hospital was that he hadn't broken a glass.

"What was it?" Donna had asked. There hadn't been pity in her voice: only kindness. It made it easier for Josh to tell her.

"A window," he'd finally said. "I just needed everything to stop."

Donna's hand settled on his arm. "Thanks for telling me," she said. "I'm so sorry."

"It's no big deal."

She'd just looked at him again, still without pity, but with something almost worse. She was upset, Josh had realized. Donna had been upset because of him.

Josh rose unsteadily to his feet, gritting his teeth against a fresh wave of anxiety. How could he have done this to her? To himself? To everybody, for that matter? Josh hadn't missed the way they'd all been tiptoeing around him yesterday morning, or the intent look on Leo's face last night.

We get better, Stanley Keyworth had said in his measured, matter-of-fact way. Better. Josh could barely remember what that felt like. It had been impossible enough to tell Stanley about the meltdown during the concert, about the flashbacks, and the mindless fear, and the window. God, that stupid window. Josh had covered it up with a heavy tarp and some tape until the super could replace it, but the jagged hole was still there, even if he couldn't see it. He wasn't sure he'd gotten all the glass out of the carpet yet.

Better. We get better.

The truth (the thing that made Josh feel actually crazy, the thing he hadn't been able to acknowledge until right this second) was that he wanted to break another window. Every window. He wanted to keep breaking them until he was himself again. It was the only thing that had made him feel awake in weeks, that had grounded him in the reality of who he was. That first slice of pain had been welcome, cutting sharply through the fog of exhaustion and panic. _Oh,_ Josh had thought, as his hand sailed through the glass, before the banging on the door started, before the horror at what he'd done had begun to settle in. _It's finally quiet._

Josh stood in the middle of his bedroom, palm throbbing sickly, heart shuddering, breath coming faster and faster, and there was no music (Josh was sure there was no music) but a siren whined somewhere in the distance and seemed to reverberate throughout his entire body, until he could hear Toby's voice cracking out, "I need a doctor!" And Toby's hands were fumbling to cradle Josh's head, and C.J. was saying his name, and Sam's face was swimming dizzily above him, and the scissors were slicing through his shirt, and the air was muggy on his bare chest, and the sirens, the sirens, the sirens, the sirens—

No. No, it was just the phone. Josh whipped around, gasping, irrational fury and nausea crashing over him. He wanted to smash something. He couldn't bear this, couldn't stand another day of trying to beat this back, to feel so alone and panicky and insane and detached from everything and everyone he was supposed to care about. Josh was so tired. It didn't matter how many hours he twisted around in his sheets, how many drinks he choked down; he kept waking up ragged, kept waking up empty. That emptiness was suffocating. And the sirens—

"Hello?" said a quiet voice out in the living room. The phone had stopped ringing. Now, Josh spun towards the door and staggered forward to fling it open, positive he'd just jumped straight from flashbacks to hallucinations.

Donna stood by the sofa with her back to Josh, wearing a deep green dress that fell just past her knees. All of the curtains were open and the late morning sun was streaming in, catching the gold of her braided hair until it shimmered. The place looked cleaner than it had yesterday; Josh's stacks of papers had been cleared away, and there were no dirty dishes on the coffee table. He could smell coffee and cinnamon, could hear something sizzling in the kitchen, but then his attention jerked back to Donna, who was twirling the cord of the landline.

"Yes," she was saying into the phone. "I've got all that. If you wouldn't mind picking him up, then...no, I think that would be perfect. Thank you. Okay, we'll see you soon. Merry Christmas!"

Josh rubbed his eyes again, not entirely convinced she was really there. He watched her hang up the phone and tug at the long, lacy sleeves of her dress.

"Hey," he said, although it sounded more like a croak than anything.

Donna turned, grinning when she saw him. Josh had never seen her wear a shade of lipstick quite that color.

"There you are," she said. "Sleep well?"

"What's going on?" Josh asked, frowning around at his apartment again.

"One second," Donna called over her shoulder, hurrying off towards the kitchen. "The bacon's gonna burn."

"Bacon?"

"Yeah! Come in here. I've got coffee."

"Seriously, what the hell is...?" Josh trailed off, coming to an abrupt halt just behind Donna and gaping at the trays of food that seemed to be covering every available flat surface. Some sort of egg casserole was perched on one of the counters, surrounded by a huge bowl of fruit salad, a plate of sausage and thick-cut ham, and two round pans of cinnamon rolls. The next counter was devoted to drinks—prosecco, and orange juice, and ice water, and hot mulled cider, and a steaming carafe of coffee. Donna barely seemed to notice Josh's dropped jaw. She was busy transferring strips of bacon to a plate lined with paper towels.

"Help yourself to anything," Donna said, stepping around him to put the plate down. She paused when she turned back towards the stove, tilting her head to study Josh. Something shifted across her face. "Are you okay? You're pale."

"Yeah. Just my hand." Josh waved it around vaguely. "Um, not that I don't want to see you, but can I ask why you're here? And why you've apparently prepared a small feast?"

"Well, it's Christmas," Donna said with a shrug. "Nobody should be alone on Christmas. And yes, before you start in on the lecture, I know that it's my Protestant holiday, not yours."

"But that's my point. It's _Christmas._ Your favorite. Shouldn't you be off roasting chestnuts somewhere? Or whatever it is you people do."

"Well, this seems like a pretty good way to celebrate." Donna's laugh was almost nervous. "There's food. There's booze. You have stitches. It's a traditional Moss Christmas already!"

"But..." Josh swallowed, his face going strangely hot. "This is sweet, okay? I appreciate it. But did you do all of this because you think I'm going to break another window?"

"No," Donna said. "It's because you're my friend, Josh. You don't have to tell me anything about what happened, or what's been going on the past few weeks. You never have to tell me. But you're my friend, and you're clearly not fine."

"Yes I am," Josh protested.

"You're not. Of course you're not. What I was trying to say is that it I just want to be with you, because this is terrible, and it's Christmas, and I care. About _you,_ Josh. That's all."

And she stood there in his kitchen on that improbably bright Christmas morning, her eyes the color of a distant but inevitable summer, the sunshine still caught in her hair, her smile fading into something more serious, into a softness she rarely seemed to allow herself around other people. Donna stood there not because she had to, but because she wanted to. She was the one who had guessed—except that wasn't it, not really. Donna had never had to guess.

Donna was the one who knew.

"Donna," Josh whispered, and took a step forward.

"It's all right. You don't need to say it."

"I have PTSD," he told her, because as badly as he wanted to pretend it wasn't true, he needed her to know this part, too. "At the party, I had a...they called it an episode. A flashback. I guess it'd been building up for a few weeks."

Josh expected Donna to tell him she was sorry, or assure him again that they would beat it, or try to make him laugh. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. I've got you." Josh closed his eyes, his head dropping down to her shoulder. It felt good to let somebody hold him. It felt good to think that he was worth holding on to at all.

They stood there in the silence, in the sunlight, for a long moment. Donna didn't ask any questions. Josh didn't hear anything that wasn't there. His hand ached, and his chest ached, and his everything ached, but Donna's arms were still around him, one of her hands smoothing along his back, and the light was creeping over them, and there was no music, no shattering glass. Josh could smell Donna's perfume, that familiar floral scent he'd catch when she bent across his desk to show him something in a briefing memo, or when she swept past him in the bullpen. It was the first time he'd noticed it in weeks.

 _This is what's real,_ Josh told himself. _This. This. This._

A knock at the door jolted loudly between them. He drew back, his nose brushing against her hair, his fingers slipping from her waist. Donna turned away before Josh could say anything, one hand pressed against her cheek.

"You should go get dressed," she said. Josh had to strain to hear her; the knocking had started again.

"What's going on?" He wasn't sure whether he was asking about who was at the door or about the way Donna had ducked her head, about the tension that had gathered in the line of her shoulders.

"You'll see in a minute." Donna straightened up, pushing past Josh and back out into the living room. "Seriously, put on a clean shirt. Wash your face. We'll be here."

"Who?" Josh called, watching the hem of that green dress whip around the corner.

"In a minute," she called back.

Josh looked around the kitchen at all the food, listened to the sound of Donna greeting someone (or several someones) at the door, and guessed.

He'd never felt more ashamed. Or surprised (and, yet: unsurprised). Or fragile. Or predictable. Or exhausted. Or grateful.

Josh had never felt more, period.

* * *

"Happy not-our-holiday."

"Hi, Toby."

"Hello. Pie?"

"You're eating pie at eleven AM?"

"I'll eat derby pie any time of the day I damn well please."

"Okay."

"Any time of the night, too, actually. Sit down. I got you a plate."

"But—"

"It's Christmas. Do you want to make Donna's face do the thing? Sit down, shut up, eat pie, be happy, etcetera."

"Fine, fine. Where did the pie come from, anyway? There was only breakfast food last time I came out here."

"I brought it."

"Okay, but...?"

"Stop squinting at the best derby pie this side of the Potomac like that, please. It's disrespectful. Also, I paid an unreasonable number of dollars for it ten minutes before the bakery closed last night, and I won't see it go to waste."

"You bought it? Thank God. I was afraid you'd made it yourself."

"Josh, I don't hate anybody that much."

"Mmm."

"See? It's good."

"Mmhm."

"So. C.J.'s having car trouble. Sam went back out to, uh, get her."

"What? Is she okay?"

"Yeah, probably just a dead battery. They'll be here any minute."

"Ah. Okay."

"Yeah."

"This pie. What the hell's in this?"

"Chocolate, pecans, bourbon, and sin."

"Apparently."

"Want coffee? I need a refill."

"You don't have to...you know."

"No, I don't."

"Huh?"

"I don't know what I don't have to do. Please, enlighten me."

"Fine. You don't have to be nice to me just because I'm having a thing. A...whatever this is."

"I'm not being nice; I'm getting you coffee. Cream and too much sugar, right?"

"Exactly _enough_ sugar."

"Says you and every twelve-year-old in America."

"You know coffee-guzzling twelve-year-olds?"

"I know twelve-year-olds, and if they guzzled coffee, it would look exactly like this."

"You're right. You're not being nice at all."

"Here. Drink that. While you're at it, listen to me."

"Toby—"

"It was a horrific thing, Josh. I don't know how you do it. I don't know—I can't fathom—how you have been doing it. I told the doctor that, and I meant it, and I'm telling you now because I want you to understand something: I will get in the way of anything or anyone that makes this more painful for you."

"Toby..."

"Don't worry. That's as nice as I'm going to get."

"Toby?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for the pie."

* * *

"Hey, Josh."

"Charlie?"

"Yeah. Sorry we were late. C.J. and Sam had to drive to the far end of town to get me."

"But it's Christmas! You gotta be with your sister, man."

"Deanna's watching cheesy movies with her friends and not missing me in the slightest. Christmas Eve was always our big family holiday, anyway."

"Well, thanks for coming all the way out here. Can I take that from you?"

"Nope, I'm just gonna set this down in the kitchen. Donna, should I—?"

"Charlie! I'm so glad you made it! Yes, right here's good. I told you that you didn't have to bring anything."

"It's my mom's old recipe. Caramel apple-pear cobbler."

"Cobbler?"

"Keep your eyes on your plate, Josh. Cobbler is merely pie's sadder, lumpier cousin."

"Merry Christmas to you, too, Toby."

"Hey, Charlie. Where the hell are C.J. and Sam? It's about five degrees outside."

"They're wrangling the rest of the stuff. They sent me ahead."

"Guess I'll go check and make sure they haven't wandered astray. Or, you know, frozen."

"Hang on! I'll come with you, just in case they need a couple extra sets of hands."

"Donna, you're wearing a dress."

"Very observant, boss. See how I'm also wearing a coat?"

"I'm not an invalid, you know. I could go and—"

"We'll be right back. Finish your pie."

"...Hi again, Josh."

"Hi again, Charlie. You really didn't have to come."

"Yeah, I did. Listen, I hope it's okay that I know. About the ATVA thing."

"I figured. Did they talk to you?"

"No. I mean, I don't work with you that closely. I overheard Leo and the President talking, and then yesterday, I saw your hand. I asked Donna about it after she and C.J. invited me to this."

"Right."

"It's not fair. And I'm sorry."

"Hey. You don't have anything to be sorry for."

"Okay."

"Please don't be sorry, all right? It's maybe the last thing I'd ever want, you being sorry about this."

"Okay. How'd you hurt your hand?"

"I punched that window over there."

"Shit."

"Yeah. Kinda lost it, I guess."

"You know, after the shooting, I smashed half the dishes in my kitchen. I threw a plate at the wall so hard it left a hole in the drywall. I made Deanna cry. I made Zoey cry."

"You were angry. You have every right to be."

"So do you."

"I don't feel angry, though. Just—I've never been so fucking tired."

"Me either."

"Charlie? Do you ever wish you'd picked a different job? Do you ever wish I hadn't talked you into all of this?"

"No."

"No?"

"No. The feeling hasn't gone away, Josh."

"I told you. It never does."

"Yeah. Uh...also, I've been seeing someone for a month or two. A psychiatrist. It's helping, I think."

"That's great."

"It's something. It could be for you, too, you know? Don't punch any more windows, man."

"I'll try."

"Look, I really am sorry. I know you don't want me to be, but I am."

"I'm sorry, too."

"Have some cobbler. I won't tell Toby."

"Thanks. And you should really try some of this pie. It's, like, unholy."

"Is that a good thing?"

"Yes. Trust me."

* * *

"I should never have let you haul that thing in here."

"Joshua! The man himself. You should sit down; Charlie just made me eat maybe the best piece of pie I've ever had."

"I know about the pie, C.J. What I don't know is why you dragged an actual real live tree into my living room."

"It's festive. This is a festive occasion! And Donna wouldn't let me bring food."

"That didn't stop Toby or Charlie."

"Unlike Toby or Charlie, I follow directions. Besides, once they finish putting the lights on, you'll understand."

"I don't want to be responsible for this tree."

"I'd never dream of making you responsible for anything."

"I don't _like_ this tree."

"Yeah, that's been made quite apparent by all the whining."

"C.J.—"

"Don't worry about the damn tree, Josh. Why don't you stop pacing and come sit down?"

"Fine. Just as long as you get rid of it later."

"Obviously. If I left it here with you, you'd kill it."

"Whatever. On January 1st, it'll be rotting on a curbside somewhere, with or without me in the picture."

"There's that holiday spirit we've been missing. You really know how to brighten a room, buttercup."

"Har har. So, what were you going to be doing today, if you didn't have to be here? Don't you have a hundred nieces and nephews to dote on?"

"I don't _have_ to be anywhere. I'm spending New Year's with my brother, assuming the country doesn't declare war on anybody. I didn't really have plans today."

"I bet you're lying."

"I bet you'll never be able to prove it."

"Fair enough. This is nice of you. All of you."

"Loathe as I am to admit this, it's our pleasure. It's been a little rough lately. Frankly, I think we all need this."

"Right."

"You okay?"

"I'm fine. But, ah...can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"What did you guys say to ATVA about me?"

"Does it matter?"

"I guess not. I've just been feeling...I don't know…"

"Guilty?"

"Maybe."

"You should have been a Catholic."

"You Catholics always act like you have a monopoly on guilt."

"It's the promise of hellfire and mandated penance, I think. Anyway, Josh, we love you. You're hurt. There's nothing for us to do but worry over you and try to stuff you with various baked goods. It's very noble of you, but your guilt is useful to nobody. Just let us do this thing for you."

"You love me, huh?"

"Oh, Jesus."

"Jesus can't help you now. You know, I always suspected you had a thing for me—"

"I could grind you into pulp, buddy. Don't forget."

"Is that what the kids are calling it these days?"

"How is it possible that you can be so sweet one minute and so unbearable the next?"

"It's kind of the whole charm of me."

"No, you're confusing that with your clueless, dimpled boyish thing."

"Come on, I'll get you a drink. Donna and Sam were making eggnog, I think. Or mimosas. Or something, y'know, festive."

"I'll take a mimosa. And Josh?"

"Hm?"

"The tree's going to be magical. Just wait."

* * *

"I forgot there was a game on today."

"Me too, almost. Tennessee's crushing the Cowboys."

"Somebody's always crushing the Cowboys, Josh."

"Well, today, it's the Titans. Is that beer?"

"Yeah. Donna wouldn't let me bring food."

"I'll take booze over shrubbery any day."

"Stop being an ass about C.J.'s tree. It'll be better with the lights on."

"So I have been repeatedly assured. And hey, thanks; this is good beer."

"It's _unbelievable_ beer. At least, according to the kid who sold it to me."

"God, are you seeing this score? Not one damn touchdown on the board. Pathetic."

"You're a Cowboys fan now?"

"I root for the underdog, Sam. I'm a man of the people."

"Don't you usually just cheer for whichever team has the mascot you like better?"

"I mean, it's not baseball, so, you know. Who gives a shit?"

"Yikes. Are they really going into the half without so much as a field goal?"

"This is what I've been trying to tell you."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know."

"...So, I guess it's your turn."

"My turn?"

"Mysteriously, I've been finding myself having little heart-to-hearts all day long. I got you guys pretty worried, huh?"

"That's a colossal understatement."

"Sam—"

"You know, I can barely remember a time before our friendship. Fifteen years, Josh. Have you ever thought about that? We've been ducking in and out of each other's lives for fifteen years. Last night, I was thinking about that time you took me out after I passed the bar. Remember that? We were drunk on something awful, something you sweet-talked the waitress into giving us for free...what was it? Schnapps?"

"Nah. She called them Scooby Snacks."

"Okay, I'm going to pretend it was Schnapps. Anyway, we were several disgusting shots in and well on our way to trashed, but I'll never forget you telling me why I should ditch the cushy job waiting for me at Franklin & Selino and come help you campaign for Slater. 'The pay's no good,' you said, 'and the hours are fucked beyond reason, and people are never going to remember your name. It's thankless. It's impossible. And it's everything.'"

"I said that?"

"You did. You said it was the most important work you'd ever done. You said governing was the real promise, that it was the only way to effect change, to open doors. You said I was too good to go corporate."

"You listened."

"Yeah, I did. I hated you for it every day, that entire campaign."

"That was a rough loss."

"It was rough because you were so right. Slater would have opened doors."

"I know he would have, Sam."

"I wouldn't have gone into politics if it wasn't for you. I would have taken the cushy job. I _did_ take the cushy job, more than once. I'm not ashamed of that; I had a career to build, and anxious parents to placate, and a slew of student loans to pay off. But you...you always come get me. You make me remember why I fell in love with the law in the first place. You show up, Josh."

"Hey. You all right?"

"Yes. What I'm trying to say—what I'm failing to say—is that I owe this to you, this career I have, this chance I got. I can't imagine my life without you in it. It would be a lonelier, bleaker, far more corporate place."

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"I should have helped you. I should have noticed."

"What the hell are you talking about? You showed up at the hospital every spare chance you got. You wanted to sue the KKK for me!"

"I meant the PTSD."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"How'd you figure it out?"

"It seemed obvious, once I stopped to really think."

"It was the music."

"What?"

"The music at work all month. It sounds like sirens to me. It's like my head is full of sirens, Sam. I can't get rid of them."

"God."

"I know."

"I have no idea what to say, Josh."

"That's because you said it already. I dunno, can we just watch the game and finish our beer?"

"I'd say yes, but I don't know if I can suffer through anymore of this. It's a massacre. Did you see that fumble?"

"Yeah, I think at this point, the Cowboys are banking on a Christmas miracle."

"Seriously, this cannot be lifting your spirits. Turn it off and come pretend to be sociable."

"I hate being sociable."

"You do not. You're not seeing the silver lining here. C.J. and Toby want to play poker, and you look pitiful enough to guilt them into letting you win a couple hands. Think of the money you can take from Toby."

"And people say I'm the Machiavellian one."

"Speaking of Toby, did he let you have a piece of his pie? This pie, Josh. You've never had anything like it."

* * *

"Hey, kid."

"Look at this thing. Tell me the first adjective that springs to mind."

"Uh...nice?"

"See? Nice. _Nice,_ not magical."

"I like the little icicle things."

"Forget the icicles. Everyone kept telling me I'd understand once the lights were on. I'm not seeing it."

"Josh, come sit down. Eat some pie."

"If I eat another piece of that pie, I'll probably explode. No, I'm gonna stand here and try to figure out what's so great about this stupid tree."

"Josh."

"All right, but I'm going on record: Christmas trees? Overrated."

" _Josh._ "

"Got it. Shutting up about the tree now. Anyway, did you want to get in on the game over there? C.J.'s dealing."

"In a minute, maybe. How's the hand?"

"It's fine. A little sore, but fine."

"Okay. And how are you?"

"I'll be fine, too, Leo."

"Okay. Did Margaret show you the memo on the Patient's Bill of Rights?"

"Yeah, we went over it yesterday morning. I'm almost sure we can get it on the agenda for the leadership breakfast if I get a one-on-one with my guy at the majority leader's office."

"Good. Hit 'em hard. We don't need a meaningful debate; we just want it to be part of the conversation."

"Toby won't like that."

"Let me worry about Toby."

"Better you than me. So, you wanna go play? I think we're betting with candy canes at this point. Charlie and Donna cleaned us out."

"Oh, God help me. Have you people no pride?"

"Not in abundance, no."

"You've got eggnog in there?"

"Yep. The fun kind and the you kind."

"You're a treat, Josh. Let's go. And you know, it wouldn't kill you to pretend to like the tree. It's perfectly nice."

"I agreed it was nice, didn't I? I was promised magic."

"..."

"Right. I mean, it's _obviously_ magical. Definitely the, um, shiniest tree I've ever had in my apartment. Not pointless at all."

"..."

"Leo? What's up?"

"Sorry. That dumb grin of yours—it reminded me of an old friend's. Just for a second."

* * *

They finished the pie, and most of the second one Toby had been hiding in the back of the fridge.

The day unfolded into game after game of poker, into C.J.'s warm teasing, into Charlie arguing about Oxford commas with Sam, into Toby trying to talk Donna into letting him order Chinese food, into Leo surprising them all by making some kind of delicious mulled cider. There were friendly arguments. One very loud game of chess. A burnt (forgotten) turkey. Eventually, Chinese food. And laughter. Real laughter.

Josh found himself outside with Toby, Sam, and a handful of cigars just after Leo left to take Charlie home. They stood on the icy steps as the sun dipped down behind the skyline, a cloud of blue smoke rising around them. Josh coughed through most of it. Toby rolled his eyes while Sam told wistful stories about sixty-five degree California Christmases.

It was one of those moments Josh would think about for years, trying to recreate the snap of the cold; the puff of his own breath; the dark, creamy taste of the cigars. This wasn't the best moment he'd ever had with Toby and Sam, or even the best part of that day—but shivering there with his friends through two cigars each, Josh found himself thinking that maybe, he could remember what better felt like.

It happened again hours later. While everyone got tipsy on his good red wine out in the living room, Josh lingered in the doorway of the kitchen, watching them all. Toby had settled down on the couch next to Donna with a tumbler of whiskey. He was smiling at C.J. with wide, unfamiliar abandon; he didn't seem to realize he was staring, didn't seem to realize there was anybody in the room but her. C.J. was in the middle of telling a long story about her ex-boyfriend, something funny enough to make Sam put his head in his hands and wheeze with laughter.

What a simple thing it was to be human, Josh thought, half-wishing he hadn't had that third glass of wine. So simple: the joys, and the sorrows, and the pain, and the relief. The great beauty of it all (the great cruelty, too) was how easily those things could be yours, and how easily they could slip away again.

"Hey," Donna said, tugging at his elbow. "You're missing it. Come sit next to me."

She pulled Josh back, back to Toby's surprised laughter, to Sam's conspiratorial eye rolls, to C.J.'s stories. To all of them. Somebody had opened another bottle of merlot, and Sam poured them each another glass before anyone could protest.

"Why not?" Sam asked. "We've got time."

Off in the corner, just in front of a window, the tree glowed faintly—and maybe C.J. had been right after all. When Donna made them all stand in a circle around it and flicked off the overhead lamps, the entire room (and everyone in it) seemed luminous.

In the dark, somewhere between the shimmering Christmas lights and the weight of Donna's shoulder against his, Josh's hand ached. He closed his eyes, listening to the thump of his own relentless heart. _This is real_ , Josh thought. _This is fine._

And anyway: he'd get better at breathing through it.

 _END_

* * *

 _ **A FINAL NOTE:**_

 _Like so many people in this beautiful fandom, I was beyond moved by "Noel." This episode is hugely important to me, not only as a West Wing fan, but as a person who suffers from PTSD. I can't explain how much it meant to me to see this illness depicted so realistically and compassionately on my favorite show. Because (not unlike Sam) writing is the lens through which I process the world, this fic was written as a direct response to the complicated way trauma can affect everyone and everything it touches. I'm still not sure I've found the right words, but I hope I've gotten close._

 _Thank you very much for reading._


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